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Canada off the 2004 Formula One Calendar: It happened to Belgium and now it's happening to Montreal. Anti-tobacco legislation is driving F1 of its traditional stronghold markets. The hubris displayed by the controller of the sport, Bernard Ecclestone, looks like it might send F1 's popularity in Europe down the crapper, especially with his constant threats to the British GP.

Giguere wins Conn Smythe playoff MVP trophy:: And the New Jersey fans show about as much class as Celtics' fans when they booed him during the announcement. For that little display I hope the Devils never win another Stanley Cup. Incidentally he's the first losing player to win the award since Ron Hextall in 1987.

Alex Zanardi finishes what he started.: After shaking down a specially-modified Champ Car at this weekend's German 500 (pics: 1, 2), former CART and F1 driver Alex Zanardi is about to run the 13 laps remaining after his horrific accident two years ago that cost him both his legs. His subsequent recovery has been more than anyone could have expected. Though a return to racing at that level is out of the question, he's trying to convince Mario Andretti to run teh Daytona 24 Hours with him. Truly inspirational.

When obsolete rules raise their ugly heads.: Today's F1 Brazilian Grand Prix saw what would have been the highly-regarded veteran racer Giancarlo Fisichella's first win, made all the more impressive since he was driving for the underdog Jordan team. However the race was stopped after a bad crash that ended the race, and while Fisi had taken the lead from McLaren's Kimi Raikonnen the previous lap, the F1 rules state that, on a red flag, the race order is taken from two laps previous. [more inside]

Recent Comments

Big changes ahead for Formula 1.

I'm torn on these changes. One one side is the perceived sexiness of F1 as the place where you go to prove you can build the best car in the world to go racing in. On the other hand is the desire to actually see drivers do more just act as operators flying around single-file. I want to see someone lock the brakes going into a turn and lose a position now and then. (Traction control really sucks, and when CART got rid of it last year you could see a dramatic change in how the cars went around the track, being able to spot individual drivers' styles even better) What the end product will look like is a lot like what CART Champ Cars have become, but since I'm already a Champ Car fan I don't really need to see that. It's all moot anyway since the auto makers won't ever let it happen. Hell, look at the way Honda and Toyota came in and ruined the IRL (insert polish a turd statement here) by throwing money trying to out-do each other. In the end the biggest joke of a racing series in the US suddenly become the biggest joke of a horrendously expensive and unexciting racing series. If the FIA gets more control over racing from the manufacturers it will almost certainly be a good thing bad thing for the sport. But I don't consider it likely.

Remember Tonya Harding?

It's official.

Yuck. Not that I was a fan of NASCAR in any way before, but this is just head-achingly stupid. I think they should go to a proper points system where winning is more valued than coming in in the top 15 consistently.

Coulthard out at McLaren at end of 2004.

Meanwhile Williams has a real problem if they expect to have to coax a world championship performance out of either of their drivers this year. JPM won't be supported well enough, and Ralf (IMO) just doesn't have it in him. Kimi very nearly did it in 2003 in a year-old car, so he'll be the one to watch this year for sure.

American hockey fans! Get ready to watch the most widely-awaited game in years... oh. Perhaps not.

Roy would have mopped the floor with Fuhr's cocaine-addled arse. That's why they didn't invite him. On another note, they got over a million ticket requests for this game, which means they could have filled Inianapolis Motor Speedway three times over. Don't tell me there's no money in hockey in Canada.

Imperialism is offsides.

The Yankees lose! The-e-e-e-e Yankees lose!

Well, the Marlins were the one team that could have made a Yankees fan out of me, and then end up being the winners. How appropriate. I still say Jeffrey Loria should be strung up alongside Bud Selig, though.

Tony Renna becomes the 67th person to die at Indy

I'm a bit late to this thread, but I have a few thoughts. First, this weekend in Australia Mario Andretti was overheard talking to Dario Franchitti (former CART driver, now in IRL, but presumably looking for a ChampCar ride next year if he's travelling all this way). Mario was talking about the fundamental design flaws of IRL cars which cause them to become airborne so easily, and he also said that you couldn't pay him any amount of money to get into one of those again. I'm not pleased with IMS in how they handled the accident. After it happened they scrambled to repair the fence and take away any sign that there was an accident there, thus hindering any kind of investigation into the matter. They are more concerned with their image than they are finding what's wrong with their cars and drivers' safety. When I see a coverup like this it just makes my stomach turn. CART had a race in Germany at the Lausitzring this year with a field half full of rookies and not a single accident. What is the difference? They certainly weren't lacking close racing that day, anyone who watched the race could tell you that. I think it's partly that the mandated wing angles of the IRL cars make them too easy to drive. Juan Montoya said that his grandmother could drive one of those cars after he won the Indy 500. This would make the drivers less fearful and less alert when in the middle of a long race where they don't ahve to do anything but turn left now and then. I've also seen way too many drivers take huge risks in cutting off other drivers and trying to bump them into a spin. Open wheel oval racing is simply not the place for that kind of thing. As such, I don't think a series should base its entire schedule on oval racing, it's simply too dangerous, doubly so if the drivers get complacent about the risks involved, which they seem to be. Robin Miller in a recent column pointed out that there have been 86 IRL races and a total of 76 drivers hospitalized in that time. By any standard that's far too many, and there's no way you can justify it by saying 'motorsports is dangerous'. There's something fundamentally wrong with the IRL and they don't seem to want to ask themselves why. They're too busy fixing the hole in the fence and going on with their banquet this weekend like nothing happened.

You know what really caused the Cubs' downfall? Bernie Mac, when singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", said "champs" instead of "home team" or "Cubbies" during the 7th inning stretch. You just don't tempt fate like that.

Let's talk about the Women's World Cup.

So the Cleveland Plain Dealer is the last newspaper on earth with a sports section I take it? Making it impossible for him to get a job somewhere else? Sorry, discrimination against women was (and arguably is) the norm, this just sounds dumb. Perhaps if no other paper will hire him either than maybe the reason why the PD won't hire him mightjust be that he's not as good as he thinks, conspiracy or no.